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Contents

List of Sidebars
List of Figures and Tables
Preface

1 What Development Economics Is All About

2 What Works and What Doesn’t?
3 Income
4 Poverty
5 Inequality
6 Human Development
7 Growth
8 Institutions
 9 Agriculture
10 Structural Transformation
11 Information and Markets
12 Credit and Insurance
13 International Trade and Globalization
14 Choose Your Own Epilogue

Notes
Index
Sidebars

2.1. Progressing with PROGRESA

2.2. Impacts of SCTs in Sub-Saharan Africa
2.3. Hope
2.4. Worms
2.5. A Remittance “Natural Experiment” from the Philippines
2.6. What? An Economic Placebo?
2.7. Impacts of a Treatment on the Nontreated in Lesotho
3.1. PPP and the Big Mac Index
3.2. Green Accounting and the Pollution Drag on GDP
4.1. The “Hunger Hurts—Need Cheap Calories” Approach to Poverty
Measurement
4.2. Drought, Poverty, and Inequality: The Sahel
 4.3. Poverty and Witch Killing in Rural Tanzania
5.1. Income Polarization Is Not Income Inequality—and Why It Matters
5.2. Remittances and Inequality
6.1. Do More Schools Mean More Education?
6.2. Do Conditions Matter?
6.3. Bednet Spillovers
6.4 . The Last Mile?
6.5. A Cash Transfer Program for AIDS
6.6. Keeping the Water Safe
6.7. The Long-Term Effects of Famine
7.1. The Growth Legacy of the Vietnam War
7.2. The Man Who Ran 2 Million Regressions
8.1. Typing, Eating, and “Path Dependency”
8.2. How Malaria Became Central to the Institutions Debate
8.3. How Market Institutions Make It Tough to Do Business in Sub-
Saharan Africa
8.4 . Do Land Rights Make People More Productive?
8.5. Entrepreneurial Monks and the “Innovation Machine”
9.1. Upward-Sloping Demand Curves?
9.2. Learning from Others
9.3. Who Controls the Cash?
9.4 . Bad to Be a Female Plot
9.5. The Mystery of Maize in Mexico
10.1. Can China Feed Itself as People Leave the Farm?
10.2. Who Migrates and Who Doesn’t?
10.3. Do Nonfarm Activities Increase Inequality?
10.4 . The Supermarket Revolution
10.5. Smart Cities
10.6. Climate Change and Poverty
11.1. Famine and Missing Markets in Tigray
11.2. All in One Price
11.3. Estimating the Shadow Price of Corn
11.4 . The High Cost of Saving Two in a Billion
11.5. Walmart in Nicaragua
11.6. Saving Fish with Cell Phones
11.7. Nudging Poor Farmers to Use Fertilizer
11.8. Which Seeds to Save?
12.1. Saving for a Rainless Day
12.2. Is It Credit or Insurance?
12.3. Credit and Productivity in Peru
12.4 . Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank
12.5. Why Poor People Pay a High Price for (Ex-Ante) Insurance
12.6. Holding On to the Last Cow (or Two)
12.7. Insuring with Satellites
13.1. A Migration Lottery
13.2. Migrants on Rails
13.3. Bat Drain or Bat Gain?
13.4 . “The Dragon’s Gift,” “The New Scramble for Africa,” and “Aid 2.0”
Figures and Tables

F I G UR E S

2.1. An income transfer project creates both direct and indirect income
effects
4.1. The poverty line
4.2. An asset recursion function with a poverty trap
5.1. Frequency distributions of income for Albania, Nicaragua, Tanzania,
and Vietnam
5.2. Decile frequency distributions of income for Mexico and Sweden
5.3. Ranking of population from poorest to richest
5.4. The Lorenz curve
5.5. Intersecting Lorenz curves
6.1. The HDI increases sharply with per capita income and then tapers off
 6.2. The classic “MVPL = w” rule
6.3. The costs and benefits of going to secondary school for girls and
boys in rural Lesotho
6.4 . Life expectancy at birth rises sharply with per capita income
7.1. The firm’s output (Q) increases with labor inputs (L) but at a
decreasing rate
7.2. Aggregate production per worker (y) increases with capital per
worker (k) but at a decreasing rate
7.3. Savings per worker is output per worker times the savings rate, s
7.4 . A is the steady-state income and capital per worker in the economy
7.5. An increase in the savings rate leads the economy to a higher steady-
state capital-labor ratio and income per worker
7.6. An increase in the labor-force growth or depreciation rate takes the
economy to a lower steady-state income and capital per worker
7.7. As productivity in the economy increases, the steady-state capital and
output per worker rises from point A to B to C
7.8. Average household savings rates vary widely across countries
7.9. Real monthly wages in China and Mexico converged between 1996
and 2008
7.10. Illustration of a regression of variable Y on X
7.11. No significant relationship between initial (1900) per capita income
and country growth rates between 1990 and 2010
8.1. Responses of undergraduates at UC Davis to the question, “How
entrepreneurial are ____?”
9.1. There is a positive association between countries’ agricultural and
non-agricultural economic growth
 9.2. The household as consumer optimizes at the point of tangency
between the indifference curve and budget constraint
9.3. In the consumer model, a rise in the price of food triggers substitution
and real income effects that reinforce one another
9.4 . The farm household produces at the point where the food price equals
the marginal cost of producing food
9.5. The farm profit effect shifts out the budget constraint, possibly
resulting in a positive effect of food prices on the household’s food
demand
9.6. Technological change can shift the agricultural supply curve outward
9.7. A liquidity constraint (segment EH) can result in suboptimal
production and a welfare loss
9.8. Concave production possibilities frontier (PPF)
9.9. Markets enable the household to increase its welfare by separating its
production and consumption decisions
10.1. Changes in per capita GDP and agriculture’s share of employment,
1990–2005
10.2. The Lewis model
11.1. Equilibrium in the village berry market without trade
11.2. The regional price is higher than the village price
11.3. Transaction costs cut producers off from higher prices in outside
markets
12.1. Consumption smoothing seeks to break the connection between
consumption and income and keep households above their subsistence
minimum even in bad years
13.1. World food prices are increasing and becoming more volatile
13.2. With trade, the consumer surplus equals the sum of areas a + b + c + d
13.3. With an import tariff, consumers lose a + b + c + d, government gains
c, producers gain a, and there is a deadweight loss of b + d
13.4 . A very high tariff can drive an economy into self-sufficiency,
producing a deadweight loss of b + c
13.5. China, Tunisia, South Africa, and India achieved rapid income growth
after opening up to trade; Zimbabwe, which followed import-
substitution policies, saw its per capita income decline
13.6. Per capita income growth in South and North Korea, 1950–2002
13.7. Mexico’s trade with the United States increased after NAFTA took
effect on January 1, 1994
13.8. Foreign direct investment inflows to low- and middle-income
countries have increased sharply in the new millennium
13.9. Total world remittance receipts have increased sharply since 1970
TAB LES

2.1. Present Value of Costs and Benefits of a Hypothetical Project

3.1. An Input-Output Table (in USD)
3.2. Leontief Multipliers
3.3. An Input-Output Table with Green Accounting
3.A1. The Leontief Coefficient (A) Matrix
3.A2. The Identity (I) Matrix
3.A3. The I – A Matrix
3.A4. The Leontief Multiplier Matrix M = (I – A)–1
3.A5. Factor Input-Output Vector AF
3.A6. Factor Value-Added Multiplier Matrix MF = AFM = AF(I – A)–1
4.1. Incomes and Poverty Measures for a Hypothetical Village
4.2. Poverty Dynamics in Rural Mexico
4.3. A Transition Matrix of Poverty Dynamics in Rural Mexico
5.1. A Hypothetical Income Distribution
5.2. Gini Coefficients for Selected Countries
5.3. Impacts of Drought on Household Income Inequality and Poverty in
Burkina Faso
5.4. Impacts of an Income Increase on Per Capita Income, Inequality, and
Welfare in a Hypothetical Economy
6.1. The Two Ends of the Human Development Spectrum
6.2. Country HDIs by Per Capita Income Quintile
6.3. Over- and Underperformers in Human Development
6A.1. Results of a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Secondary Schooling in
Lesotho
9.1. Net Benefit Ratios by Rural Household Group in Four Central
American Countries
10.1. Nonfarm Income Shares of Selected LDCs
13.1. David Ricardo’s Illustration of Comparative Advantage
13.2. The Largest Trading Partners of the United Kingdom (2011)
13.3. Zambia’s Major Trading Partners
13.4 . Major Free-Trade Agreements by Year
Preface

The RebelText alternative textbook project was launched at the Taylor dinner
table one night in fall 2012. Ed had just told the campus bookstore to order up
125 copies of an undergraduate econometrics textbook at $150 a shot. (That’s
a gross of $18,750 just from one class.) Over dinner that night, Ed’s twenty-
year-old son, Sebastian, announced that he had spent $180 (of his parents’
money) on a new edition calculus text required for his course. Sebastian’s little
brother, Julian, exclaimed, “That’s obscene!” Sebastian responded, “You’re
right. Basic calculus hasn’t changed in decades. You don’t need new editions to
learn calculus.”
Before dinner was over, Ed’s two kids had ambushed him and made him
promise never, ever, to assign an expensive textbook to his students again.
“So, what do you want me to do then, write one?” Ed asked them.
“Exactly,” they answered in unison.
“And get a good title for it,” Ed’s wife, Peri, added.
 The first RebelText creation was Essentials of Econometrics, with Aaron
Smith and Abbie Turiansky. That seemed like a big enough project, but then Ed
was assigned to teach a 350-student undergraduate development economics
course. Naturally, he felt he had to write a book for that one, too. Travis
climbed on board. That’s how Essentials of Development Economics became
the second member of the RebelText line.
What’s RebelText? It’s a textbook series designed to be affordable, compact,
and concisely written for a new generation that is more at ease “Googling”
than wading through big textbooks. Being both more affordable and compact,
it’s easier to carry around. Write in it. Don’t worry about keeping the pages
clean or whether there will be a market for your edition later, because at this
price there’s no need to resell it after the class is through. RebelText will
naturally evolve as needed to keep pace with the field, but there will never,
ever, be a new edition just for profits’ sake.
In 2014, RebelText and UC Press struck an alliance. This UC Press edition
offers readers a more complete coverage of what we see as the essentials of
development economics than the original print-on-demand edition, while
keeping the book affordable and compact. Through our new partnership with
UC Press, we hope to turn RebelText into a better and higher impact alternative
textbook initiative in a world that we all believe is in desperate need of
textbook reform.
There is particularly a need for a new undergraduate development
economics textbook. The books out there seem more interested in
summarizing a bunch of topics than in teaching people what they really need to
know in order to do development economics. This book is different.
WHO SHOULD USE T HIS BOOK AND HOW

When we sat down to write Essentials of Development Economics, we wanted a

compact book for an upper-division undergraduate development economics
class. That is primarily what this is. The knowledge in this book should poise
any undergraduate to engage in further study or to venture out into the real
world with an appreciation for the essential concepts and tools of economic
development. More than a textbook, this can be a helpful basic reference for
any graduate student, researcher, or development practitioner.
There’s a striking disconnect between development textbooks and journal
articles. Specialized journal articles really are what shape the way we think
about development economics problems and research. Sadly, they are not
written for undergraduate courses. Nevertheless, the topics they cover,
research approaches they use, and critical findings they present are essential to
understanding development economics, and they can be made accessible.
Journal article synopses are highlighted in sidebars throughout this book.
RebelText is intended to be used interactively with online content. QR
(Quick Reference) codes at the end of each chapter link readers with online
materials, including images, animations, video clips, and interviews with some
influential development economists. You can access all of the URLs behind the
QR codes on the website rebeltext.org, or by clicking on links in the e-version
of this book. We encourage you to explore the multimedia material as a way to
make the concepts come to life. On the website you’ll also find the data sets
included in this book, homework problems, study questions, and
supplementary appendixes. When we use RebelText, the website becomes a
center of class activity.
RebelText was created to make learning and teaching as efficient as
possible. Students need to learn the essentials of the subject. They do not want
to wade through thick textbooks in order to locate what they need, constantly
wondering what will and won’t be on the next test. Because it is concise, there
is no reason not to read and study every word of Essentials of Development
Economics. All of it could be on the test. Master it, and you will be conversant
enough to strike up a conversation with any development economist and may
even be able to get directly involved with development economics projects.
You can think of this book as presenting the “best practices” and state-of-the-
art methods for doing development economics. By mastering it, you’ll also
have the conceptual and intuitive grounding you need in order to move on to
higher level development economics courses. You’ll probably find yourself
referring back to it from time to time, so keep it on your shelf!
If you are teaching or learning with RebelText, consider contributing your
ideas about novel uses of the book and website, interesting data sets, programs,
and projects. To find out how, visit rebeltext.org and click on “contributing to
RebelText.” Some of our best links have come from our students!
ABOUT T HE AUT HORS

Ed loves teaching economics, especially microeconomics, econometrics, and

economic development. He’s been doing it for about twenty-five years now at
UC Davis, where he is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and
Resource Economics. He’s also done a lot of economics research; he has
published more than one hundred articles, book chapters, and books on topics
ranging from international trade reforms to ecotourism, immigration, and
rural poverty. He’s in Who’s Who in Economics, the list of the world’s most
cited economists, and he has been editor of the American Journal of
Agricultural Economics. He has worked on projects with the United Nations,
the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as with
foreign governments, including those of Mexico, Honduras, Canada, and
China. His new book, Beyond Experiments in Development Economics: Local
Economy-Wide Impact Evaluation (Oxford University Press, 2014), presents a
new approach to doing impact evaluation and cost-benefit analysis. You can
learn more about Ed at his website: jetaylor.ucdavis.edu.
Travis Lybbert was initially torn between environmental studies and
landscape architecture as an undergraduate major at Utah State University. A
class on environmental and resource economics demonstrated the power of
economics as a way to size up social problems and evaluate potential solutions.
After graduating with an economics major (and French and environmental
studies minors), he and his wife, Heather, lived in Morocco for a year on a
Fulbright fellowship. The experience prompted him to pursue graduate work
in economic development at Cornell University. After teaching for two years at
the Honors College at Florida Atlantic University, he arrived at UC Davis,
where he is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural
and Resource Economics. Travis has worked in North Africa (Morocco,
Tunisia, Syria), sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Ethiopia,
Kenya), India, and Haiti. As a visiting researcher, he has spent time at the
World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization in
Geneva, the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, and the Max Planck Institute in
Munich. His current projects cover a range of topics, including drought risk
and vulnerability, asset and poverty dynamics, technology adoption and
markets, childhood and maternal nutrition, and intellectual property and
international technology transfer. Travis teaches graduate and undergraduate
courses in economic development, applied economics, and econometrics. To
learn more about him, visit his faculty website: tlybbert.ucdavis.edu.
ACKNOWLEDG MENT S

RebelText would not exist if it weren’t for our families and students. Special
thanks go to Sebastian and Julian, who shamed Ed into launching RebelText; to
Peri, who has supported this project from the start; to Heather, Hannah, and
Rockwell, who fully embraced the adventurous sabbatical year in Ghana that
gave Travis the professional breathing room to work on this book; to
colleagues at the Economics Department of the University of Cape Coast who
made Travis’s sabbatical year possible; to Steve Boucher and Michael Carter
for providing many thoughts, inputs, and field tests of our book in the
classroom; and to our cutting-edge team of graduate student assistants,
including Anil Barghava, Isabel Call, Michael Castelhano, Diane Charlton,
Mateusz Filipski, Justin Kagin, Dale Manning, Karen Thome, and Abbie
Turiansky, all of whom provided valuable research assistance and advice at
various stages of this project. Finally, we thank the many undergraduate
students who kept us going by repeatedly telling us how “awesome” RebelText
was and for catching errors and typos. They, too, are part of this project.
J. Edward Taylor and Travis J. Lybbert
Davis and Berkeley, California
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 “That means, little dog,” she told him, “that you will have to stay at
home.”
She searched the hurt member to make sure that the thorns were
all out.
“Yes”—she was still bent over Patsy’s foot as she answered her
father’s remark—“he is likable.... There, Patsy, don’t make a fuss.”
She bound up the paw in her handkerchief.
“I do not know that he puzzled me,” she went on, straightening up.
“I thought he seemed rather lonely, though.”
“He’s not likely to be that, long,” was Anderson’s reply. “It’s a
thundering pity, too. I understand he’s in deep with that Hallard
woman, though I’ve tried not to believe it. She don’t seem his kind. I
asked him to come here again,” he went on, a little ruefully; “and yet
I’m not sure I meant it.”
“What kind of woman is this Mrs. Hallard, Father?” Helen
regarded her father now, with interest in her level grey eyes.
“Why,” Anderson said, doubtfully. “She’s not the kind I should
think would catch him. It’s a case of catch, all right, though, I guess;
even Westcott seemed to know about it.”
He considered a moment, frowning.
“She’s loud, and coarse, I suppose; but she’s a mighty handsome
woman, if a man don’t care about some other things. And I somehow
should think Gard would. I like a different sort, myself.”
He glanced proudly at the figure beside him. Helen was in her
riding-habit, waiting for her horse to be brought round.
“But she—she’s only a rough kind, is all you mean, isn’t it?” Her
face flushed, ever so little.
“Oh, Kate Hallard’s a decent sort, all right enough, I dare say,”
Anderson hastened to answer. “Of course there’s always talk. I’ve
heard some myself, but I discounted it. In the first place, she’s hard
as nails. No nonsense about her. Not her. Her tongue ’s tipped with
vitriol, and when she opens her mouth the men catch it.” Anderson
shrugged his shoulder a trifle.
“And then, of course,” said he, “There’s no telling about Gard. He
may be a little more attracted than he might want to be, and yet have
strength enough to pull out of it and get away.”
 “I should call that being weak, if he cared!” cried Helen,
indignantly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Her father took Dickens’ bridle-rein from the
puncher who had brought the pony up.
“It all depends upon how a man looks at some things,” he said,
throwing the reins into place.
Helen took them and prepared to mount, a hand on the cantel.
“The one thing I don’t like about this way of riding,” said
Anderson, “is that it curtails our privileges. You don’t need helping
on.”
Helen sprang to the saddle, adjusting herself with a little shake.
“’Twould only hinder,” said she, smiling, “like every other help we
don’t need.”
She flushed suddenly, as she realized that she was quoting a saying
of Gard’s.
“You keep Patsy here, won’t you?” she called as she rode away,
leaving her father looking after her with an expression half proud,
half wistful and wholly tender.
“She’s clean grown up,” said he, to himself, as he stooped and
snapped the leash into Patsy’s collar.
“The bonnie thing! Lord! How I wish her mother was alive!”
He stood staring out upon the sun-washed desert, wide, silent,
baffling, and spoke the yearning thought of his heart.
“I don’t know how to be a mother to her, and she’s sure going to
need one. Lord, Lord!” He cast a comprehensive glance over the
fierce, brilliant landscape. “This is an all-right country for men and
burros,” he said, with a half-whimsical sigh, “but it’s a mighty hard
one for women and horses!”
Helen had promised Jacinta to ride as far as Old Joe Papago’s, to
see Mrs. Old Joe about a young Indian girl who was to come and help
Jacinta with the work of the casa. Old Joe was better off, financially,
than any other Papago in the section, and his wife, who was reputed
to have some Spanish blood, exercised a sort of guardianship over
the women and young girls of their settlement. This latter was only
three or four miles distant, and there was a slight ting in the
December air that quickened Dickens’ nerves, and made him ready
for a frolic, but Helen was in no mood to gratify him. She ignored all
his invitations to run, and kept him to the slow little walk of the
bronco.
He hated it and fretted under the steady rein; but for once Helen
did not heed him. She was going over in her mind the events of the
past five days. Westcott, in the brief space of his hour with her, had
sought to sow the seeds of doubt of Gard in her mind. He had spoken
vaguely of certain tricky games that the stranger was trying to play
upon him, and an imagination less pure than the girl’s might have
inferred much from the subtle little that he let fall regarding Kate
Hallard.
The carefully chosen seed, however, had found no favoring soil—
no fostering care. Helen was herself of too true and sturdy a fiber to
doubt the truth and the stability of Gard’s nature. She dismissed,
with hardly a thought, the suggestion of trickery on his part, and the
other poisoned arrows wholly missed their intended mark.
“There’s a lot of ways of thinking about any one thing,” Gard had
said one day, as they talked out long, long thoughts of life, and right,
“But a man—he’s got to follow the straightest path he sees; for he’s
got to live so he can like himself, and care to be with himself.”
Yes: that was what he would do, without fail. He saw straight, and
he would follow the straight path. Oh! It was good to feel trust in
one’s friends! Something of the peace and serenity that Gard himself
had won out of solitude and despair fell upon her spirit at thought of
his clear vision, and steady holding of the right.
Yet her heart was heavy. She told herself that this was because she
feared for the ultimate happiness of one friend. She remembered her
father’s words about Mrs. Hallard: “coarse; hard; her tongue tipped
with vitriol.” Surely they must be unjust, or this man, who was fine
and true, would not care. He could not care. Perhaps he would come
to see before it was too late, and would “pull out and get away.” But
no: that he would not do. His was a steadfast nature; of that she was
sure!

Before Old Joe Papago’s door, reins dropped to the sand, stood a
stout roan horse, and leaning against the door-post, talking to Mrs.
Old Joe, was a woman dressed in khaki. It needed but a single glance
to tell Helen who it was.
The blonde head turned as the girl rode up, and the big black eyes
surveyed her comprehensively, but there was no sign of recognition
in the hard, impassive face. Mrs. Old Joe grunted a response to
Helen’s greeting, and the latter dismounted.
Acting upon a sudden impulse she came close to the woman by the
doorway.
“Good-morning,” she said, simply, holding out her hand. “This is
Mrs. Hallard, isn’t it? I am Helen Anderson.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Hallard said, apparently not seeing the
outstretched hand. Kate Hallard had no mind to be patronized: but
she studied the girl’s face, stealthily, and the bold eyes grew a shade
softer.
She did not know that Gard had left the Palo Verde that morning.
Westcott, who had tried hard to come to some sort of terms with her,
in the other man’s absence, had told her that the latter would
probably let himself be detained at the rancho for a fortnight, at
least. He had drawn a vivid picture of Gard making the most of this
opportunity to win a way into Miss Anderson’s good graces. The
lawyer’s methods had been primitive. He sought to play upon the
woman’s presumable capacity for jealousy, and thus set her against
Gard.
He might have saved himself the mental wear and tear. Kate
Hallard was not a fool; nor a devotee of the heart-complication
school of fiction. She held no illusions about Gard’s attitude toward
herself, and she had come to believe in him, passionately.
Nevertheless, Westcott’s efforts had awakened in her a keen interest
in Helen.
“I expect you are on the same errand as myself,” the girl was
saying, determined not to be repulsed. “Mrs. Joe keeps all the girls in
her reboso.”
She spoke in Spanish, that the Indian woman might not feel left
out of their talk, and the latter smiled, toothlessly.
“My, no!” exclaimed Mrs. Hallard. “You don’t catch me taking on
girls to look after. I’m on the buscar for a boy.”
“And have you succeeded?”
 “Not I! They ain’t lookin’ for work; not the bucks; an’ she wouldn’t
trust me with a girl, not even if I’d take one.”
She laughed, defiantly, and the young girl divined, instinctively,
that she did so because she was ill at ease. She stood looking at her,
wistfully.
Did Gabriel Gard really love this woman? Was she really coarse,
and hard, and vitriolic of tongue, as her father had said? It could not
be; or such a man could not care. There must be another side, and
shame be upon her, Helen Anderson, if she could not win it to the
surface.
“I wonder—” she began, with some hesitation. “Of course I don’t
know what you want, but Wing Chang, our cook, has a young cousin
—or something—visiting him. He came a few days ago, with some
teamsters from the mines. I think Chang does not want to take him
on. He was scolding about it, yesterday.”
The defiance was gone from Mrs. Hallard’s face, and a little look of
friendliness crept among its hard lines.
“Why, if he’s old enough to wait on table,” said she, “I dare say he’d
be just what I want.”
“Oh,” Helen replied, “I know that he can do that. He must be about
sixteen years old, and he has waited in restaurants.” She did not add
that that was one reason why neither she nor Chang cared for the
lad’s services. “Why can’t you ride back to the rancho with me and
see him yourself?” she asked, instead.
“Why, I’d take it right good of you if I could,” Kate Hallard said,
after a moment’s hesitation. Mrs. Old Joe had departed to find the
mother of Jacinta’s prospective handmaiden, and they were speaking
English.
“’Tain’t no meanness in me that won’t have a girl round,” she
added, as if wishing to set herself right with her hearer, “but I want
some one to sling victuals, at the grille, an’ I can’t have any half-
baked girl-squaws round. Men’s devils; I can’t look after them an’
girls too.”
“Oh!” Helen spoke in impulsive protest, and Mrs. Hallard’s laugh
was hard again.
“You don’t believe what I said about men, I guess,” she said, and
Helen answered very simply:
 “Of course not; it couldn’t be true you know, so long as women are
not—what you said.”
“I ain’t so sure about the women—not most of ’em—” Mrs.
Hallard’s handsome face wore a sneer now.
“Anyway,” she argued, “they’s plenty of ’em doin’ their share o’ the
devil’s business in the world.”
“But there are good men,” Helen persisted, “and good women,
too.”
“Right you are about there bein’ some,” was the reply; “but I draw
the line at there bein’ many. I’ve lived in this world thirty years,
nearly, child, an’ I ain’t found such a lot. I know one good man
though.”
Her face softened, and at the sight a thrill stirred Helen’s pulses.
She felt sure that Mrs. Hallard was speaking of Gard. There was
softness under that hard shell after all.
Before she could say anything more, however, Mrs. Old Joe
returned to the hut with the Papago girl and her mother, and she set
her mind to the faithful performance of Jacinta’s errand. It was
quickly arranged that the handmaiden should be brought at once to
the Palo Verde, and the matter completed, the two white women rode
away together.
A soft wind was blowing across their faces; a wind full of the
essential odor of the desert: impalpable, a little acrid, bracing withal,
and subtly suggestive of mystery, and of vastness. Helen threw back
her head, yielding to the desert spell.
“Oh!” she cried, “this is the place to be, after all. Don’t you feel so
about it?” she demanded of her companion.
“I don’t know,” Kate Hallard was watching her, puzzled. “I never
was away from it. Sometimes it makes me ache.”
“Ache?” It was the girl’s turn to be mystified.
“Yes.” The woman could not have told why the hidden thoughts of
her heart suddenly became articulate at this girl’s invitation to
speech.
“It always seems to me as if the desert—wants something,” she
explained, hesitatingly. “I d’ know what ’tis, but the feeling’s there: a
sort of emptiness, as if it wanted to cry and couldn’t. Sometimes at
night, when I hear a burro ‘yee-haw,’ or a coyote howlin’, seems to
me like’s if, if the desert could cry that’s the kind o’ noise it would
make. It’s like lonesome women—if there’s any sense in that!” she
added with a half-ashamed laugh.
Helen’s heart was full of sympathy that she felt was but partially
understanding. So this was what the desert had brought to this hard-
seeming woman. She had a sudden sorry realization that the
marvelous waste had never told its ache to her, dearly as she loved it,
and with the realization came the knowledge that the woman beside
her understood because she had truly lived and suffered in it. It came
to her to wonder if Gard had ever felt the ache of the desert.
“Do you ever want to get away from it?” she asked, softly.
“I d’ know,” her companion considered.
“I ain’t never known what anything else is like,” she finally said,
helplessly, “but seems to me you git to feel like’s if you was part of
the desert, an’ something would break if you got too far off.”
Ah! That Helen knew. She had hungered for the desert, even if she
had never ached with it.
“It’s the place of places for me,” cried she, taking off her hat and
letting the wind stir her hair.
Kate Hallard studied her, wonderingly. She had known few women
in her life; never before so youthful a one. She wondered what
Gabriel Gard had thought of this girl.
“Mr. Gard’s at the rancho ain’t he?” she asked, and Helen’s cheek
paled for an instant. The older woman noted the fact with a fierce
little pang.
“He went back to Sylvania this morning,” Helen answered, and the
other looked her surprise.
“I didn’t suppose he’d git away so quick,” she said. “Sandy Larch
was in yesterday an’ said he was in for another week. If I’d known he
was comin’ in I wouldn’t a’ gone off,” she added, and a sense of the
desert’s ache crept into Helen’s own heart.
Yes: Mrs. Hallard was right: it was a lonely place.
 Arrived at the Palo Verde, the girl called Wing Chang, telling him
the business of the moment, and directed him to send in his young
relative. Then she took Mrs. Hallard to her own room, a big, low-
ceilinged place, with wide windows looking out toward the far
mountains. Kate gazed about her wistfully. She had seen few
women’s rooms in her lifetime.
This one was the sort of composite suggestion of dear girl and nice
boy that the modern college girl’s room is apt to be. Cushions
blazoned with the initials of Radcliffe and of Harvard heaped a couch
covered with the skin of a mountain lion that Helen herself had shot.
Among the pretty trifles on the dresser was a practical-looking little
revolver, and from one of the two hooks that held her light rifle hung
an illumined panel bearing the arms of Radcliffe. A cartridge-belt
hung from another hook, and beneath it, on a stand, lay a bit of
dainty embroidery which she had been working on that very
morning.
Beside it was a fat little book bound in age-yellowed vellum. Kate
Hallard picked this up and glanced through it, curiously.
“Is this Chinese?” she asked, bewildered.
Helen explained that it was Greek, and the woman laid it down
with a weary little laugh.
“I ain’t never been out’n the territory, as I said,” she explained, half
defiantly. “Men’s about the only books I ever read, an’ Lord! they’re
mostly writ plainer’n that.”
“I haven’t known many,” Helen answered, “except my father—and
one or two others.”
“One or two’s likely to be samples o’ the rest,” the other remarked,
carelessly. “I suppose you know an awful lot?” she continued,
glancing at Helen’s book-shelves. She had never before seen so many
books together.
“I know just enough to realize that I am dreadfully ignorant.”
Helen’s face was troubled; the older woman yearned toward her. She,
alas! could think of nothing in her own experience that was likely to
be of use to the girl.
Wing Chang’s cousin just at this instant appeared, silently, in the
doorway.
“Oh, Lee,” Helen cried; “Mrs. Hallard wants to see you.”
 “Chang say come,” the boy replied, “I come quick’s could. Me velly
good waiter boy,” he added without preamble, turning to Kate
Hallard. “Thinkee takee your job.”
“Land sakes!” laughed she; “he’s none so slow, is he?”
“Can you wait on customers as prompt as all that?” she asked of
the boy.
“Me velly good boy,” he repeated, gravely, “makee hash fli allee
same like hellee.”
“Lee!” Helen looked shocked. “You should wait to see whether
Mrs. Hallard wants you,” she finished, rather tamely.
Lee looked at her in surprise. “No can help,” he announced,
conclusively, “China boy velly scarce; no can get many; him got take
me; one velly good boy.” He glanced again at Mrs. Hallard.
“I go get clo’,” he concluded, imperturbably. “Go skippee Sylvania.
See you later.”
He was gone, without circumlocution, and Helen surveyed her
visitor a little helplessly. “I’ll have Chang talk to him,” she said.
“No need,” laughed the other. “But my! He’s sure something of a
hustler, that boy. I reckon I’d better hit the trail or he’ll be runnin’
the grille before I git to it.”
“Do you really think he will do for you?” Helen was somewhat
dismayed.
“Sure,” was the reply. “He’ll do first rate. He means well; don’t I
know Chinks?”
“You have to take ’em the way they mean,” she added,
philosophically. “That’s the way to git along with ’em.”
“You seem to know a great deal,” murmured Helen, wistfully. She
felt somehow very young and inexperienced.
“I suppose you’ll see Mr. Gard when you get home,” she added,
tentatively. “We—that is—Father was afraid he ought not to go so
soon—on account of his foot. We hope it will be all right.”
Again Kate Hallard crushed down the little pang that would come.
“Mr. Gard, he took hold of a little piece o’ business for me...” she
spoke very casually, “I reckon it’s bothering him a lot. I expect he
wants to get done with it an’ git away from here. He’s been mighty
kind about it.”
“Oh! He would be that.” Helen could not have explained why her
heart seemed suddenly lighter. She was conscious of a quick, friendly
feeling toward this woman of the desert.
“You’ll come again to see me, won’t you?” she asked, detaining her
guest when the latter had swung to the saddle.
Kate Hallard hesitated. “I reckon I can’t git away from the grille
much,” she said, evasively. “I never go nowhere much.”
The girl’s instinctive wisdom prompted her not to press the point
then. She would let it wait, but her wistfulness sounded in her voice
when she spoke again.
“At any rate we’re friends, are we not?” queried she, looking up
into the black eyes.
They returned her gaze with a sudden glisten, as of ice-bound
pools when Spring has touched them. In their fundamental honesty
the two natures stood for the moment upon common ground.
“Friends.” Kate Hallard drew a long breath as she took up her
bridle-rein. “Child,” she said, “if the friendship of a woman like me is
ever any use to you, it’s yours while there’s a drop o’ blood in my
heart,” and ere Helen could make answer she was well down the
avenue toward the great gate.
 CHAPTER VII

The days immediately following his return to Sylvania were hard

ones for Gard. The few cautious inquiries he had dared to make in
the investigation of his own affairs had resulted in the information
that Jim Texas was dead and that Hart Dowling had left Wyoming
and gone on into Idaho. Gard’s messenger had been unable to get to
him on account of the deep snow.
He read the letter containing this news lying coatless upon the
sand, far beyond the town. The desert was his one solace in the
enforced idleness of waiting for word from Sawyer, for which he had
written to San Francisco. The vast barren seemed in tune with his
own mood.
The fierceness of his ache was there; the yearning of his solitude:
he tried to picture the vast sea of sand overgrown with verdure,
calling up cool visions of tree and pool, and gentle growths born of
the small spring rain on the green grass. The picture came before
him like a memory of delicious holidays in lush woods.
It was but a vision however. The scent of the desert was in his
nostrils; the impress of the desert upon his brain. He opened his eyes
and saw again the silent reaches of the waste—wide, untamed,
untamable—and sat up, the better to view the lean landscape.
At his first movement a jack-rabbit, observing him from beneath a
cholla, gathered its swift hind-legs under him and fled, with
incredible rapidity, before the shadow of fear. Gard laughed, but
there was underneath his amusement a sense of the constant deadly
strife of the place. If he had no designs upon the jack-rabbit, plenty
of other creatures had. The lurking snake that lay in wait to take him
subtly; the lank coyote, more cunning than he, if not so swift; even
the Gila monster, slow and hideous; the savage, sneaking wild-cat,
and the little hydrophobia skunk, were constantly on the alert to
surprise those wide-open eyes and ears. These all preyed upon him,
and upon one another, caught in the endless struggle of the desert,
moved upon by constant need to sustain life, and to hold it against all
other life.
 The thought brought Gard to a sharpened sense of his own danger,
and of the enemies who, if they but knew, would be so quick to hunt
and harry him. The savagery of it all smote him with a keener
desolation. The armed vegetation, grotesque and menacing; the
preying creatures of the plain; the sand-laden wind that was
constantly tearing down and rebuilding the shifting scene—were not
all these but a commentary upon the mad, devouring human world
about him?
But the wind that laid bare the earth’s nakedness clothed and
healed as well, purifying the air and cleansing the waste. The give as
well as the take of life was there. Death was in the desert, but not
decay. Gard, feeling it all in the whirl of his emotions, knew that the
grim plain which mothered the whole fierce brood had mothered him
as well, giving him back health and strength from her own burning
heart, and he loved her, as her children must.
His thoughts turned inevitably to the glade. He had a whimsical
idea that his trouble would all seem easier if he could but talk it over
with Jinny. Deep down, however, he knew better. Not even to that
faithful listener could he have voiced the longing of his whole nature
for Helen Anderson. He cherished the thought of her in his secret
heart, going over, minute by minute, the hours they had spent
together. Each word of hers, each look, gesture, had its special power
of endearment!
What if he were to tell her the whole story, would she believe him?
Would she consent to go away with him into a new life? He could
realize enough from the mine to make such a life full of rich
possibilities, and there were far countries enough!
But what sort of a man would it be, who could ask the woman he
loved to help him live a lie? He asked himself the question and awoke
to a realization of his further folly. What right had he even to dream
of her—to imagine that she could ever care for him at all? Even
though he should stand before her without a shadow in his past he
would be a brave man who dared raise his eyes to her. How could he,
of all men?
Then he remembered Westcott. He had seen with his own eyes
that he dared. Could that man ever hope to win her?
 The torture of this thought drove him out over the desert at noon,
when the sky closed brassy-yellow above him, and the heat-reddened
air over the sand seemed the hue of his own thoughts. He fought his
way through it to peace, far out in the open, when the afternoon wind
was driving the heat of the plain skyward, and seaward over the
mountains, and he came back against that cleansing breath, his
wonted strong self, to a conference with Kate Hallard. She was bitter
against Westcott that day, breathing out wrath, and the desire for
vengeance.
“If you’ve ever noticed it,” Gard said, “there’s a kind of
reasonableness in the way things happen, even when they look black.
They happen out of each other; and there’s Something managing
them, no matter how it looks, sometimes. I’ve found that out.”
“I’d like to help in the managin’,” Mrs. Hallard said, grimly.
“You couldn’t.” Gard shook his head thoughtfully.
“You couldn’t see the whole scheme,” he continued. “And we don’t
need to want to. Whoever’s doing it is making up a whole piece out of
’em. That’s this world we’re in. It’s our world. We belong in it; and
there ain’t anything in it for us to be afraid of but just ourselves.”
He pondered his own saying for a moment, repeating it as if to
reassure himself.
“That’s sure right.” He took up the thread again.
“It makes me think of a game I played once at a party I went to,
when I was a kid, back in the states. They had a big, round paper
apple fixed up, with something in it for each of us; and we each had a
string given us to follow up till we came to the end and each found
what belonged to him. Ever see anything like that?”
Mrs. Hallard nodded.
“They worked a game o’ that sort once at some Christmas doin’s
where I was raised. Did you ever think o’ me goin’ to Sunday
School?” she asked, with a bitter little laugh.
“Sure I did.” Gard went on with his simile. “A man’s got to hold on
to his own string,” he said. “And follow it up till he gets to the core of
the apple. He’ll find his own share there. This Westcott, he’s trying to
haul on other folkses’ lines, as well’s his own, and that gets things in
a mix-up. We’ve got to try and make him play the thing right; but it
ain’t our party, and therefore it ain’t our job to throw him out of the
game altogether.”
Mrs. Hallard’s brows were knit in the effort to follow. She had not
herself learned, as yet, to lean upon the logic of events, and
vengeance was a part of her own theory of life. Then, because she
seemed to find no thoroughfare through the subject, she turned
abruptly away from it.
“I met up with your Miss Helen Anderson yesterday,” she said,
suddenly.
The light in Gard’s face was revealing, but he merely stood,
expectant, until she had told him the whole of the encounter at Old
Joe Papago’s, even to Helen’s proffer of friendship.
“Bless her!” the man murmured, with face illumined. “Ain’t she a
brick, though?”
“She’s better ’n a brick,” said Kate Hallard, promptly. “She’s a real
woman, with a lovin’ honest heart. Look here, Mr. Gabriel Gard! Be
you goin’ to stand round with your quirt in your hand, while that
there Westcott devil rides off the range with her?”
Gard’s face was pale, and the sweat stood upon his forehead.
“Don’t!” cried he, sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking
about! A man’s got to follow his own line, I tell you, and get it clear
before him, before he asks any woman to take hold of it with him!”
He turned abruptly and left her. Yes: that was what he must do.
Whatever was to be met, he must meet it, and clear the way, before
he took one step nearer Helen.
“But it’s hard to wait,” he muttered, pacing the desert with
clenched hands; “hard as wickedness!”
The stage that night brought him a letter from San Francisco.
Sawyer, it told him, had left the city. The writer believed that he had
gone to Arizona for the winter. He was thought to be somewhere on a
ranch in the neighborhood of the Navajo reservation. Gard read that
with a little feeling of dismay. He did not care to go up there. He had
grown confident that he was not likely to be recognized; but still,
there was danger, and he wanted to keep clear of complications until
such time as he was ready to act for himself. If anything should
happen to him he had no one to take up his work on the outside. He
must find someone whom he could trust.
 Suddenly he bethought himself of Sandy Larch. They were friends.
He could trust Sandy, and he would.
He spent a long time that evening, writing a letter of instructions
for Sandy Larch to read, in the event of any failure in his own plans.
This he put carefully inside a worn memorandum book, and did the
whole up in a neat packet which he meant to leave with the foreman,
together with a heavy money-belt which he was then himself
wearing. If necessity arose he would have to trust much to the
foreman’s shrewd judgment in action, but at least he would fix things
so that Sandy should not be acting in the dark.
He got an early start in the morning, and rode out to the Palo
Verde. Morgan Anderson was away. He had left at daylight, to go
down into Mexico, Sandy Larch explained, on some mining business.
Incidentally, he was going to see about some choice lemon trees that
he had set his heart upon, and before their arrival ground must be
broken to receive them.
“So it’s up to us to git them workin’ cows gentled an’ onto their
job,” the foreman told Gard; “We’re goin’ to bust ’em out right now.”
“Say,” he added, “That lawyer-sharp ’s here. Came down last night,
to see the patron; he’s goin’ on to Sylvania, I guess. He said
somethin’ about it, awhile ago.”
“I came out to see you on a little business matter, Sandy,” Gard
had begun, when one of the cow-punchers demanded the foreman’s
attention. Ere he could turn back to Gard, Westcott came down from
the casa and mounted his horse which was standing at the rail.
He greeted Gard curtly. “Going to stay and see the fun?” He
queried, with a jaunty air of being entirely at home. “I think I will,
too. We’ll be glad to have you.”
The future working-stock had been removed to an outlying corral,
to make room for the horses the men had been working out. The Palo
Verde was short of men that season, and Sandy was obliged to plan
his work carefully. The punchers who were to break in the cattle were
grouped now, and ready for the fray.
“Come on,” the foreman called to Gard, who had tossed his
saddlebags down in front of Sandy’s shack, and the outfit went
tearing across the sand to the outer corrals.
 A wagon and a plow had been hauled out to the scene of action the
night before. The principles of gentling the steers were brief and
fundamental. Two punchers threw their ropes over the horns of one
big brute and dragged him out upon the desert, while two others
brought up his yoke-fellow. Once yoked and hitched, with a riata
from the horns of each to the saddle-horn of a good man on a clever
pony, to tow them along, the creatures could move forward, or die in
their tracks. When, as was usual, they decided to do the former, they
were considered gentled. Their future, thereafter, was in the keeping
of the Mexican who might have them in hand to plow with.
“Hullo, you heap heathen!” Sandy Larch called out to the Chinese
cook in the big wagon as the outfit came thundering up. “How’d you
git out here?”
Wing Chang grinned, as was his habit whenever the foreman
addressed him.
“Heap tallee fun,” he explained. “Me come look see.”
Sandy Larch and Manuel had already brought out a steer. Broome
threw his rope next, cursing roundly at the greenhorn who was
helping him, and whose first wild throw covered the horns of the
wrong animal. Since it would be quicker work for him to change than
for the other, Broome released his “cow,” the big steer that had run
him from the corral the week before, and took hold with the
greenhorn.
The brutes were yoked and hitched to the wagon, and the fun
began with Chang’s precipitate and unpremeditated departure from
the vehicle. He rolled over and got to his feet as the cowboys started
out over the sand, pell-mell, “pully haul,” in a medley of shrieks and
oaths and thunderous bellowings. The spectators of the proceedings
kept along upon the flanks of the procession, shouting
encouragement or derision to the sweating cowboys as they galloped,
and occasionally lending a hand so far as to lean over and apply the
spur to one or the other resisting “bos.” In two minutes’ time the
wildly gyrating mass was well out on the plain.
Then from the corral came the sound of a sudden crash. A huge
red and white bulk hurled itself over the bars, and the steer that
Broome had released came charging out, mad with rage and fear.
 For an instant he stood dazed by the success of his own exploit.
None of the other cattle had followed. He alone had possessed the
wit and prowess to essay the barrier, one bar of which the greenhorn
had failed to secure.
The great brute’s hesitation was brief. For an instant he pawed the
sand, bellowing challenge to the world; then, head down and tail up,
he started like a streak of lightning for the only man on foot.
Wing Chang had already realized his danger, and was flying for his
life, his pigtail streaming behind him, his yellow face distorted by
fright. The outfit wheeled and took notice.
“Wow! Wow! Fli’ gun. Allee samee fli’ gun!”
The high-pitched shrieks of the terrified Chinamen rose above the
noise of hoofs, the shouts of men, the bellowing of cattle. On he sped,
the mighty bulk of his pursuer flashing along in what looked like a
continuous streak of red, behind him.
“Hell!” One of the punchers ejaculated. “It’s us to be hunting a new
cook!”
The next instant his bronco’s heels were twinkling as he raced to
the rescue.
Gard had already started. He had no rope, but he was nearest the
scene, and he saw, as did the others, that no rope could be flung in
time. He was sending his pony along at full speed, minded to get in
and head “bos” off. It was Wing Chang’s only hope.
The great steer was already perilously near, when the Chinaman
stumbled, falling his full length on the sand. His yells still pierced the
air in high falsetto, and his feet continued the motions of running,
flinging up and down with the regularity of pistons as his long yellow
fingers clutched the desert.
Down came the foe! An instant, and the thing would be done; but
in between him and his yelling victim flashed a man and a horse, and
Gard, reaching down, caught the Chinaman by the belt.
A quick, skilful jerk brought him up as the pony dashed on, and in
the same instant the cowboy’s rope caught the steer by one upflung
hind hoof. The great brute turned a clean somersault in the air, and
landed with a crash upon his back.
 Gard, keeping hold of the Chinaman, brought his horse to a
standstill near a great branching suhuaro, and set the still
vociferating Wing Chang upon his feet. The cowboys already had two
ropes over the recalcitrant steer, and were leading him back to the
corral, minus one long, murderous horn, and greatly chastened in
spirit.
It was high noon before the three pairs of cattle were gentled
sufficiently to permit of their being yoked without absolute danger to
life. By that time each “yoke” had pulled the wagon a quarter of a
mile, with more or less sobriety, and had plowed a torturous furrow
on the desert.
“Which I would rise in my place,” Sandy Larch said, seriously, “an’
point with pride at them yoke o’ cows as a good morning’s work.”
He and Gard had ridden back together, and were in the foreman’s
shack. Westcott had gone on his way to Sylvania.
“I want you to do something for me, Sandy,” Gard said. “I’ve got to
go up north, and I want to leave—”
His hand sought an inner pocket as he spoke, and he drew it out
with a look of dismay. Then he began searching his other pockets.
“Lost something?” the foreman said, watching him.
“I—should—say—I—had!”
The full significance of his loss was telegraphing itself to the inner
strongholds of Gard’s consciousness.
“Sandy!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve got to find it—in a hurry, too!”
He was outside, now, looking for his horse, which had been turned
in to feed with the others.
“We’ll rustle a couple more,” Sandy said.
“Lord!” he thought, “Something’s eatin’ him. I never thought I’d
see him in a flurry.”
They were ready in a moment, and riding back to the ground they
had gone over in the forenoon.
“You kin bet your hat you let it go overboard when you reached fer
that blasted Chink,” Sandy said, and they made for the spot where
Gard had rescued Wing Chang.
 But no brown packet rewarded their scrutiny of the ground. They
paced the desert on to where Gard had set the Chinaman on his feet,
and found nothing but the hole of a Gila monster. Sandy kicked it
open with his heel, and the occupant came up, hissing hideously, but
that was all.
They circled the whole ground of the morning’s operations, but
without result, and at last they returned to the shack. Gard’s face was
drawn in haggard lines, but he had recovered his poise.
“I reckon that thing’s got tromped down into the ground,” Sandy
said, by way of consolation. “I didn’t see none of the boys pick up
nothin’. They’d a’ hollered if they had, an’ we was all together.”
“All except Westcott.” Gard spoke very quietly, but Sandy shouted.
“Gosh! That’s so,” He cried, “I fergot him fer a minute. I swan!
Would it be mighty bad if he was the one to find it?”
“A little worse, in some ways, than anybody else living.”
“Lord! Lord! But I don’t see how he could, Gard: He rode off to
Sylvania. It’s happened the way I said. They was a mighty lot o’ hoofs
rampaging round there, an’ your goods, whatever ’t was, got tromped
in; but you can bet Sandy Larch’ll keep his peepers open fer’t if it’s on
top the ’arth.”
“Anyway,”—Gard roused himself—“there’s all the more reason why
I should do what I’ve got to do while I can.”
He was undressing as he spoke, and presently produced the belt.
“I want you to put this away somewhere, Sandy,” he said. “If I send
you word to do some things for me it may come in handy. And
Sandy, if anything happens to me you go and see Mrs. Hallard, and
do what you can to help her. She’ll need help.”
Not a flicker moved the serenity of the foreman’s steady eyes. His
was not the friendship that questions.
“I’ll do anything you send word to do, Gard,” said he, “but I don’t
believe I’ll need all that money. You got plenty to use?”
“Sure—” with a sigh. “Money ain’t the thing I need most, Sandy.”
“Bless yourself for that,” was the quick reply. “When it comes to a
pinch the filthy’s one of the things inconvenient to miss.”
He put the belt away in his own secret hiding-place and busied
himself with getting up his friend’s horse. Gard meant to ride to
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